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"From the Cricket Field to Dodger Stadium?" asks Jason Wilder of mysteryandmisery.com in the subject line of his e-mail to me today. The article is from Australia's ABC Sport.
A ROOKIE South Australian cricketer who has never watched a baseball match has been identified as a potential US Major League pitcher. Chris Duval pitched a baseball for the first time at Adelaide Oval yesterday, clocking a speed and displaying a style that impressed talent scout and former New York Yankees player Pat Kelly.
Duval, 20, a medium-fast bowler for Northern Districts, has yet to make his first-class debut for the Redbacks.
But the 192cm youngster has learned he can pitch a ball at 137 km/h and could have a career in baseball.
Kelly, who scouts for the Los Angeles Dodgers, was alerted to his talent by SA fielding coach Nathan Davison.
"Definitely I would contact the Dodgers and say he's an interesting kid," Kelly said. "What he has is the ability to move the ball naturally - so he has no idea what he's doing and the ball does things you cannot teach people to do."
Duval's first pitches clocked up to 137 km/h - or 85 mph, compared with about 90 mph from major league pitchers - "which is fantastic, taking into consideration that he'd never done it before."
The top players earn in the order of $38 million, but Kelly said "it's a very tough road" to that level, competing against hundreds of other hopefuls while on a "very meagre" salary. Duval said: "it would be a great opportunity - you don't know what could happen and I've always got cricket to come back to."
Wilder, in a bit of understatement, concludes: "I do wonder if this kind of scouting has any merit."
Among other things, I wonder how they arrived at that figure of $38 million. Random, no?
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